AHA - China Get With The Guidelines (GWTG) Quality Improvement Program

The overarching vision and purpose of the American Heart Association's (AHA) suite of cardiovascular quality improvement programs, Get With The Guidelines® is to use data collection, analysis, feedback, and process improvement to extend the use of evidence-based guidelines throughout the healthcare system and improve patient care.

Previous support provided by Pfizer allowed the AHA to expand its Get With The Guidelines® (GWTG) program into stroke with CME-based beta pilot and outpatient programs. The success and key learning from those initiatives resulted in additional expansion with GWTG- HF (heart failure), GWTG-Resuscitation (focused on cardiopulmonary arrest events in hospital), and GWTG- AFIB (atrial fibrillation).

Based on the overall success of the Get With The Guidelines suite of programs and the current public health landscape of cardiovascular disease within China, the Chinese Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Chinese Society of Cardiology (CSC) expressed strong interest in adapting the GWTG program for China. In June 2013, the AHA and the CSC entered into a formal Memorandum of Understanding for the two organizations to jointly develop and implement quality improvement programs in China.